Secularization and pluralism have shaken the institutional foundations
of established religions, including the Catholic Church. Once directly
involved in territorial rule, churches now struggle to be heard in the
public forum. Similarly, in the cultural and ideational areas, the rise of
science and rational thinking has pushed aside religion's mystical interpretations, relegating expressions of the sacred to a narrow portion of
modern life. Moreover, pluralistic living which demands that all religions and expressions of religions be treated with equal respect tends to
dislodge automatic acceptance of the superiority of Christianity, making all religious belief relative. As a consequence, in this postmodern
era, a papal rhetorical strategy must acknowledge the diminished and
relative standing of religious vocabularies. However, as Dobbelaere has
observed, when the secularization and pluralistic process is considered
to be dependent on social constructs that are not simply given facts but
defined and constructed through human interaction and engagement,
the outcome of the process is far from inevitable, leaving open the possibility of religion's persistence.
1 The emergence over the last one hundred years of a rhetorical papacy, that is, a papacy that relies on
persuasive discourse to lead the church, demonstrates how Christianity
has adjusted to the competition of secular ideologies. This papal discourse, as part of a shared vocabulary constructed by the Catholic
Church, is what Wuthnow deems an important consideration in learning about how humans order their worlds.
2

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